The Ends
by Jessa L'Rynn
Summary: Rumor has it Rose will be back for a bit and then gone again. Want to know how that's even possible? Step inside.
1. The Classic Tragedy Version 1

_We've been told we're to have Rose back for the end of Season 4. But the rumor suggests that we won't get to keep her. This fic describes as many possible Season 4 ends as I can think up. Will try to alternate serious with humor. All special requests given serious consideration. **Don't own Doctor Who. Will take it off your hands for a by-line.**_

* * *

**The Classic Tragedy Version 1.0**

_**AKA: The Beginning at the End**_

"Doctor!" Jack shouted, running into the sparking, smoke filled, shaking lab, holding an unconscious Rose in his arms. "Doctor, I've got her. The bloke's dead, she's safe. Doctor!"

The mad-eyed Time Lord glared at him, then looked at Rose, and all the anger and insanity drained out of his eyes. "You've got her?" he whispered faintly. "She's alive?"

"Yes!"

"Give her to me," said the Doctor, and Jack transferred his precious burden into the Doctor's arms. "And cut the blue wire, please."

The Doctor held her close and wept into her hair, kissing her face, checking her for injuries, whispering words that no one would ever hear into her small shell of an ear.

Jack cut the blue wire.

There was silence.

The Doctor turned to him and held out Rose's soft, delicate form. "Take her, Jack, protect her. You can do that, you have literally all the time in the world, don't you?"

"But, Doctor?" replied Jack, incredulously. "I thought you wanted her with you?"

"She's not safe with me, Jack, and look what I just did. I was going to destroy an entire civilization because one man tried to harm her. I don't deserve her, Jack, and I can't take care of her. I love her, so much. Too much. You have to go. Take that ship right there, the one with the time controls. Go back as far into time as you can stand and hide her from me. Just knowing she's alive and well, I'll be able to get along."

"But Rose," said Jack, hoping against hope that the girl would wake. "She'd want to be with you anyway."

"She'll understand, Jack. She always understands." He held her close, one last time, and kissed her soft, sweet pink lips tenderly. "Rose Tyler," he breathed, "I love you."

Jack took the girl from the Doctor's arms, cradling her like a precious baby in his arms. "Will we see you again?"

"I don't know," said the Doctor. "She may try to find me after awhile, I don't know. But try not to, Jack, for the good of the Universe, please."

Jack took Rose into the ship, made her comfortable, and then came back. The Doctor was standing in the door of the TARDIS.

"I guess this is goodbye, then," Jack said.

"Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Tell her that, for me, will you?"

"I will. Be careful."

"You know me."

Jack snorted, then approached the Doctor slowly. The Doctor sighed and then tilted his head and kissed Jack's lips tenderly.

"Don't be afraid to love her if you can, Jack. Just take care of her and, both of you, have a fantastic life."

Jack watched the TARDIS vanish forever once again and almost smiled, this time.

* * *

Rose woke later and, after much screeching, screaming, and hysteria, after demanding to be taken back, she resolved herself into a sudden, inhuman calm. 

"Rosie, what is it?"

"I didn't get to tell him."

"He knows."

"Not this, he doesn't," she said. "Jack, I'm pregnant."

"What?!" Jack exclaimed, horrified and delighted and confused and furious. "How did that happen?"

Rose smirked at him. "I figured you'd know that part."

* * *

Some days later, they landed on a small, orange planet in the one place in space and time the Doctor would never, ever visit. 

"Where are we?" Rose asked, softly, not really curious. She stroked her gently rounded tummy and smiled up at the double suns over head.

"No where, yet. We're well back in time, near the very, very beginnings. The star that produced the nebula that eventually produced the Earth will still be burning strong for a few thousand years."

"Wow. And we're safe here?"

"Oh, yes, very safe. It's fine, Rosie, I'll take care of you and the little ..."

"A boy, Jack."

"You're sure?"

"Yes. I can feel it." Her eyes flashed vivid, brilliant gold.

"Oh." Jack thought for a moment. "What're you gonna name him?"

"Something from his father's world, I think," said Rose, leaning up against a dark tree with silver leaves. "But I don't know a lot. Still, I remember some words, and I liked this one. Don't know what it means, though, but that's what we'll call him. I hope the Doctor would like it."

"What's the word?" Jack asked, softly, reaching out to draw her close.

She laid her head against his shoulder and smiled. "_Rassilon_."


	2. The Resignation Ending

**The Producer's Resignation**

_**AKA: The Russell T. Davies Runs For His Life Ending**_

* * *

"So, Rose Tyler," said the Doctor, softly. "Wanna come with me again? Into time and space? See the Universe?" 

Rose smiled gently, tenderly. "I'd love to, you know that. I've missed you, yeah?"

"Me too," he breathed, so filled with hope and love and desperation that he didn't quite even know what to do with his hands.

"But I can't."

"What?" he said. "Why not?"

"Well, it's just... Doctor, I've got three kids at home."

"What?"

"Yeah. They're cute. Oldest's John, middle one's Allen, and the youngest, the girl, I named her Tardis."

"What?"

"What, what? S'pretty name!"

"TARDIS?!"

"Well, it was that or Calliope after their dad's gran, and if we were naming her after inanimate objects, I thought I'd best pick a smarter inanimate object."

She sighed and reached up, running a hand through his hair. "I gotta get back, Doctor. Mickey and the kids will miss me."

"Yes," he agreed, threw open the TARDIS doors, and chucked her purple top out after her. "Bye, Rose," he shouted.

"Bye, Doctor, I love you."

He closed the doors, dematerialized the TARDIS and sat down, grimly. "Yeah, right."


	3. The Off Camera Ending

**The Off-Camera Ending**

_**AKA: The Fan-fiction Writers' Paradise**_

"I just wish you could stay with us," said Rose. "With me," she added, wistfully, looking down at their joined hands.

The Doctor just studied her, taking in her golden beauty and the wonder of her soft presence, wishing beyond dreams that he didn't know exactly how much it would hurt to say good bye, again. "Rose Tyler, I..." He stopped. The TARDIS blinked a question at him, and Rose stared incredulously into his face. "Know what?" he said.

"What?" she breathed, her beautiful face the very picture of despair.

"You're right."

"I am?" she said, excited and baffled at the same time. "About what?"

"OK."

"OK, what, Doctor!" she exclaimed, chewing her lip, her eyes dancing even as tears poured from them and streamed dark mascara down her face.

He reached over and touched two controls and the console room went mostly dark. "C'mon," he said, softly. "Let's go."

"Where to?" she asked.

"Somewhere with a house with carpets," he replied.

"You... what? I... what?"

"I'll stay with you," he said. "Every single day, for the rest of your life, Rose Tyler. You and me, here." Nervously, he considered her. "Is that good?"

She beamed and then threw her arms around him, laughing out loud for sheer giddy joy. "Oh, Doctor, it's fantastic!"

"Brilliant," he agreed and the doors opened before them on a life like nothing they'd ever dreamed even possible.

* * *

The TARDIS lights came up on a new console room, something softer, more rounded, less full of regret. The Doctor stood in the light, smiling a wistful smile. His hair had gone grey at the temples and his clothes were something completely different, although the trainers remained. He was holding a picture in his hand, of a much older Rose, smiling at him with love in her eyes. He beamed back, brushed away a small tear, and then started up the TARDIS. "Well, old girl," he said. "It's just you and me again. Let's see if the Universe next door missed me." 


	4. The Voluntary Departure

**The Voluntary Departure**

**_AKA: The "He Really Had It Coming" Ending_**

"So here we are," said Rose, grinning. "Off to see the stars again."

"Yep," agreed the Doctor, popping the 'p'. "Tell you what, though, wasn't any fun without you."

"Thanks," she said. Then she frowned. "Where are we?"

"Dunno," he replied.

The moment he finished speaking, a girl in a fabulous kimono appeared at the side of the console. The Doctor blinked at her in astonishment.

"I am the Princess Mary Sue Sueferston the Nine and Eleven Sixteenths," she said breathily. "I have come to outshine all."

Rose sighed. "Look, I'm the only Mary Sue allowed around here." She rounded on the Doctor, but he was gaping at Mary Sue. In fact, with his huge brown eyes and his mouth opened, all he needed to look like an excited puppy was the drool. She turned to Mary Sue, who inhaled and tilted her head just smugly so. A quick glance at the Doctor and she realized the drool wouldn't be long in coming.

She walked around the console and stepped on his foot, but he didn't notice. "So not doing this again," she said, and started collecting her things.

Once she had everything safely stowed in her bag, she stepped toward the door. "Bye, Doctor!" she said.

"Wait!" he cried. "No, Rose, NOOOOOOO! Please, please don't leave me!"

"But what about the royal tart?" she said. "Completely NOT doing this again."

His head turned back to the Mary Sue. "But she's a princess," he said, sounding pretty darn well near hypnotized.

"Yep," she said. "This is my stop. 'K, I love you, b-bye!"

Then she stepped through the doors and was gone.

Behind her, the Doctor shrieked **_"ROSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!"_**

Mary Sue put her hands on her hips. "Who's Rose?" she demanded.

"Ask Martha Jones," he said, tersely, set the coordinates for Torchwood, opened the door, kicked Mary Sue out, and left to find his Rose.

Surely, SURELY, she couldn't leave him over a tart of a princess?

* * *

The Girl in the Fireplace was a very good episode because we all wanted to scream about it. It made us all crazy, and that was what it was for. 

The truly interesting thing about it, though, is this. Who would you be, if a man's mistress speaks to you kindly about how much you both love him, and how loving him is worth the bad things that come along? If you answered Rose Tyler, you're getting warmer, but let's go more generic. Who in the world would a mistress have that sort of conversation with?


	5. Fast Forward, Rewind

**The Fast-Forward/Rewind Ending**

**_AKA: Wibbly-wobbly, Timey-wimey_**

Rose was falling into the time storm. "Doctor!!" she shrieked. He reached for her desperately.

"Hold on, Rose!"

When it became obvious she couldn't, he looked sternly into her eyes. "I'll find you, Rose, if it takes another 900 years! I love you!"

She nodded. "Quite right, too," she breathed, and fell.

* * *

In down-town New York, a young blonde amnesiac called Rose Tyler went about her business, working in a shop. She didn't know anything about herself, never had done. They'd only found her ID on her, but the woman who had that ID was missing, presumed dead, and had been for fifty years.

The new Rose Tyler didn't know what exactly to think of that, but she assumed she was probably the original Rose Tyler's daughter. They looked alike, after all. Of course, she supposed she could be the same Rose, if she never aged a day in fifty years.

She hadn't aged a day in five and a half, after all, why not fifty?

She'd even been shot in the head once in a mugging gone bad, then got up and walked away. So, weird as she was, she supposed anything was possible.

The head cashier handed her a deposit bag as they were leaving the closing store. Rose sighed, feeling an odd sense of deja vu, and took the bag down to the cash office.

She was abruptly surrounded by manikins come to life. No fair, manikins were one of the things she was most afraid of in all the world, and she'd never known why. She ducked and prepared to get murdered by nightmares when someone caught her outstretched hand in a very familiar gesture. She looked up as the man tugged on her arm to see green eyes and a World War II jacket.

In a friendly American accent, he said one word, just one. "Run!"

Rose held on tight to his hand and they made for the stairs at a dead run.

After a few split second discussions about Autons, Rose made the rather snappy deduction that the man was either insane, suicidal, or as immortal as she appeared to be. Maybe he could tell her who the hell she was.

"What's your name?" he asked, deja vu all over again.

"Rose Tyler," she said, while he looked at her as if she was very familiar.

Then, he grinned, holding up his friendly little bomb. "Nice to meet you, Rose Tyler. I'm the Doctor, by the way. Run for your life."

_Oh, hell no_, she thought, and charged after him.

_Not this time_, a voice she couldn't place, with a Manchester accent, agreed.


	6. The Bad Fairy Ending

**The Bad Fairy Ending**

**_AKA: Last of the Time Lords 2_**

**This is bad humor, based on a theory I heard that a certain actor had been tapped to be the next Doctor. Any idea how WRONG that would be?**

* * *

"Rose!" the Doctor shouted. "You have to go back now, if you don't, two Universes will collapse, and there won't be any bananas in either of them!"

"Oh, God, Doctor! How do we avoid the tragedy?! The loss of millions of lives is bad, but the loss of bananas? How will we ever go to parties again!?"

"I don't know, Rose. I just don't know. Wait, I've got it! Everyone on Earth has to wish for you to get home safely! Then you can go!"

"How's that going to happen?"

"I'll take Martha back in time a year, let her walk around and tell everyone about you. Then, at the exact moment, they'll all think it, and you can go!"

"Will that work?"

Martha eyed Rose with no little jealousy and even more annoyance. "Oh, TRUST me," she said, looking deep and meaningful glares at the pair of them.

* * *

Martha walked the Earth, once again. "And she's blonde, and brilliant, and he loves her to pieces, and you can't help wanting to get rid of a girl like that, honestly, you can't."

* * *

Everywhere on Earth, people spoke. "Send Rose home."

* * *

"Doctor!" Rose exclaimed, "something's happening."

He watched her carefully as the light around her grew to titanic proportions. He ran the sonic screwdriver over her. "Oh, this is fantastic," he said. "Really, no better word, not this time. Seriously. You're stabilizing, Rose. Martha and everyone wished for you to be sent home, and you are being - sent home to the TARDIS, where you belong!"

"Oh, I'm so excited!!" she shouted and threw her arms around him.

* * *

Martha came in, worried, dirty, and exhausted. To her horror, she found the pair of them cuddling each other. She shook her head, walked out the door, and wandered around until she found the underworld thug the Doctor had been bullying last week.

"Tell you what," she said. "Here's 500 pounds from my Torchwood paycheck. Shoot Rose Tyler, the Doctor and, what the hell, shoot Jack Harkness too, just for fun."

"Thanks!" said the thug, found the above hanging out together in a chip shop, and shot them all.

* * *

Rose died and Jack carried her body away crying as soon as he awoke. He came back for the Doctor, but Martha had already hauled his bleeding body back to the TARDIS. She figured if he could survive being literally older than dirt, he could survive a couple of bullets. She laid him out in the console room and went to make tea.

When she came back, she screamed and dropped her mug. The Master was lying on the console room floor wearing the Doctor's suit.

He sat up when she screamed. "What is it, Martha?" he asked, then stopped. "Oh. Oh, damn."

"Great," said Martha, "just what I need, another Time Lord with an unrepentant thing for blondes."

The man in the Doctor's suit looked at her with an expression of abject horror. "What do I look like?" he demanded, then apparently heard his own voice, made some connection, and went rifling through his coat for a mirror. He stared at his reflection for a moment, and then the new personality asserted itself. "Oh, _-censored for American Audiences-_ bloody _-censored again-_ cannot _-censored-_ don't even _-censored, what is this?!-_ Not Ginger! _-Censored, even for British Audiences-_ Rude doesn't _-censored, censored, censored, censored- _Have to_ -really, really censored-_ and a _-censored, again, woah- _beard!"

Martha Jones, having seen that anger before, wondered if someone was going to die. For several very good reasons, she rather hoped it was her.


	7. Didn't See That Coming

**Didn't See That Coming**

**_AKA: The Good Use of a Handy Miracle Ending_**

Rose frowned. "You're leaving, then?"

"Yeah," he said. "Wish I could stay, though, you can't even imagine how much I wish it."

"Can't I come with you?"

"This Universe needs you," the Doctor replied, running a hand up along her face.

She snorted in disgust. "What this Universe needs," she said, "is a Doctor."

He nodded weakly. After their adventures here over the past few weeks, he couldn't help but agree with her. "Shame I don't come in six packs," he said with a sigh.

"Yeah," she agreed. "I love you," she added. "Always, you know that."

The Doctor nodded. "And I guess, if it's my last chance to say it. Rose Tyler, I..." He stopped and stared at her. "Oh, just you wait, Rose, I've got it! It's brilliant. Fantastic, even!"

"What?" she asked, through heart-broken tears.

"Step outside for just a minute, Rose. Well, I say a minute. Make it ten. Well. Just a few, and we'll make good use of a handy miracle."

Because she loved him and because she trusted him, and because she couldn't bear it one more minute, she did as he asked.

Something happened. There was sudden golden light, pouring out, even through the suddenly slammed closed doors of the TARDIS. The whole world was shaking with titanic, thunderous force. Rose stared in awe as a storm built up over head.

Lightning struck nearby and she was thrown to the ground. She felt a sharp pain in her head and looked around, frightened and baffled. The world seemed to be shaking even more and then, all at once, everything went blurry and then black.

* * *

Rose lay still on the ground as silence fell.

* * *

The doors of the TARDIS opening woke her and she blinked blearily and got heavily to her feet. She knew she'd been out awhile. It had been sunset when the surges started and now it was full night.

She looked warily at the TARDIS and the Doctor stepped out.

The Doctor.

His grin was infectious as he looked at her, checking her over quickly with concerned, burning eyes.

She gaped at him, feeling that if the whole world exploded behind her right now, she wouldn't actually notice.

"Close your mouth, Rose Tyler, or there's no tellin' what'll get in there."

She nodded nervously and closed her mouth with effort. Then, she opened it again. "But I thought..."

He stepped close and offered her a hand. She took it with trembling fingers, and it was him, oh gods!

It. Was. **Him.**

Leather jacket, dark hair shorn close, bright, silver blue eyes that spoke a thousand words with every glance. Impossibility beyond all impossibilities, a handy miracle indeed.

"My Doctor!" she yelled, ecstatic, and jumped on him.

He caught her as she jumped, pulled her tight into his embrace and buried his nose in her hair. Just like he had always done. "My Rose," he replied softly.

When he put her down, he looked very serious into her eyes. She couldn't help grinning insanely, even if he had something important to say. He was here, he was here, he was here. She felt like dancing.

"I... we... us..." He sighed. "I and I decided that it would be a little less confusing this way, in case he ever gets to come here again."

The TARDIS started to dematerialize. Then, she shifted, settled, and the Doctor stuck his head out the door. "Told you you were right," he said. Then, he smiled softly. "I love you, Rose."

"So... I... damn, you do going away presents, don't you!"

The Doctor and the Doctor laughed, one merry bell tone, one heart-rendingly familiar baritone chuckle.

"New definition of 'one more for the road'," he replied. "Well, I say 'new'. Maybe I mean old? It's kinda tricky with this sort of thing, don't you think?" He looked ready to philosophize of the definitions of new and old for nigh onto centuries.

"Get going, pretty boy," said the Doctor, who stood at her side and held her close.

"Be nice," he replied. Then, much to the shock of them all, he stepped out, dragged himself into a hug, then pulled Rose in between them. "Take care of her. I mean it. You may be me, but I'll still break your neck if you don't."

"Yeah, right," said the other Doctor, beaming cheekily. "And then it'd just be you and you standing there."

Rose just stood there between them, inhaling the fragrances of leather and books and time travel and her one true home and loving every second of it. "Do you suppose?" her very human mouth let slip before her brain got it sufficiently throttled.

The Doctor looked confused, the other Doctor smirked at her naughtily. Then, he leant over and kissed her goodbye, a real kiss, full of love and oh, such longing.

"Shoulda dubbed me, too," she told him sadly as he stepped away.

He nodded sadly. "Ah well, in an infinite universe... universes..."

"You want Jackie's dog?" she teased.

He laughed, then abruptly sobered and looked deeply into her eyes. "I love you forever, Rose. Never forget that."

Then he stepped into the TARDIS and was gone.

But he wasn't gone, because he was right there next to her.

"Can't believe you let me turn into that," he said, his accent thick with annoyance.

She ignored it. Like she could've stopped him! "What are you gonna do, Doctor?"

"First, I vote we go scare your Mum speechless," he said. "Then, how 'bout some chips?"

"Yeah!" she agreed. She worried her bottom lip with her teeth, still wondering if she might wake up and find all of this to be but a dream. "But what about the TARDIS?"

He smiled. "That's why I've got this." He opened his hand and something bright and brilliant glittered in his palm.

"What is it?"

"The germ of an idea," he said. "The idea, in this case, is the TARDIS. We've accelerated her growth. Should be only about five years or so."

"But in the meantime..." She chewed her lip some more and eyed him nervously. This bit had always made him so antsy before. "Well, you'll have to go domestic."

He grinned broadly, blue eyes shining with all the promise in two Universes. "Honestly, Rose Tyler," he said, "I can't imagine anything with you being particularly domestic, no matter how hard we tried."

He offered her his leather clad arm and she took it, sliding her fingers down to fit just so into his hand. He beamed at her and kissed the top of her head.

"Thank you," she breathed softly. "This is just..."

He nodded and pulled her close as they walked away together. "Fantastic," he said.

There really was no better word. Not in any Universe.


	8. The Reversal

**The Unexpected Reversal**

**_AKA: School Reunion. From Hell._**

"Well, that's that, then," said the Doctor with a contented sigh. "Sarah's back where she belongs, Tegan's back where she belongs, Jack's back where he belongs -ish." He smiled up at her and held out his arms. "And you, Rose Tyler, are back where you belong."

She fell into his arms and hugged him. When their lips met, it was a kiss even the TARDIS seemed to have been waiting eons for.

At last they parted, each looking splendidly goofy and grinning like an idiot. Rose, however, soon lost that grin, looking thoughtfully over the Doctor's shoulder as if steeling herself. Her face said clearly, in fact, that she'd rather confess to collecting chia pets than say what she had to say.

The Doctor's giddy joy left his face.

"Before we left Pete's World," Rose began, "did you notice anything... off... about Jackie?"

He shrugged, then grinned and nodded, as radiant and innocent as a child claiming good behavior to Father Christmas. "She was nice to me. Didn't slap. Didn't snog, either, which was actually better, let me tell you."

Rose smiled, a sweet but sad smile, almost as if humoring the small child previously mentioned (the one who'd put ink in the fish tank.) "That's because that was Jackie Harper, my niece."

"What?" he demanded.

"She's my baby sister's daughter. She's 42."

"What!!"

"My sister got married really late because she was seeing this impossible bloke... oh, nevermind. Point is, my sister had her when she was 40. She's 42, now. And my sister was born when I was twenty one. Both of 'em grew up on stories about you - they'd never treat you funny, ever."

"What?!?!"

"I'm more than a hundred years old, Doctor." She sighed as he stared at her, face impossibly pale and expression utterly uncomprehending. "That's why I have to go, now."

He didn't say anything, just moved between her and the TARDIS door, eyes ferociously demanding answers. Possibly he had lost all English words except "What" from his vocabulary, because normally by this point, he would have started spouting out absolute pages of arguments.

"You see," she said slowly, "the thing is. You don't die, you regenerate. I haven't got used to the idea of watching that happen again and again to someone I..."

"You what?" he breathed.

"Look, the thing is..." she sighed. "I'll never age, I'll never change, I'll never die. I'll just go on and on. I'm wrong, you see."

He gasped harshly and shook his head, firmly, frantically, fidgeting with his hands as if he didn't know where to put them.

She looked into his eyes and spoke, in a voice heavy with pain and the darkest of bitter irony, "You could spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of my life with you."

Then she batted around him and shoved the door open. Before they parted, though, she smiled up at him. "We will meet again. My Doctor!"

* * *

Someone was waiting for her, sitting on the edge of the ornamental fountain near Torchwood Three's headquarters.

"That was mean," he said, pouting.

"I know."

"He didn't get it," her companion added.

"I know."

"Sarah Jane would have loved it."

"I know."

"Will you stop that?" he demanded.

"Hey, all the times I had to listen to you randomly yell 'what'. So glad you grew out of that, yeah?"

"Well, it hurt! I was torn up, absolutely shattered. Didn't know what to do with myself for months!"

She smiled. "I'm sorry."

"Kiss it and make it better, Rose Tyler," he requested in that dark, soft, flirtatious tone he had taken with her since the first time they'd met. Well, aside from first asking her to turn off her cell phone.

She snorted, and ran a hand along his face, smiling into his vivid green eyes. She let their heads draw closer and then, the instant she knew she had him, she shoved him into the fountain.

He came up coughing and sputtering and laughing in outrage all at the same time. Rose beamed sweetly at him. "Physician," she quoted, "heal thyself."


	9. Time Squared

**The Time Squared Ending**

_**AKA: The New Beginning**_

_As Per the Request of AKAArzosah_

* * *

The Doctor was dying, but he was fine with that. Rose and her sisters had gotten away, and that was really all he cared about.

The enormous coils wrapped round his body held him five feet above the roof and completely immobile. They were draining his life energy off at an alarming rate, while the villain of the piece - a black-hearted parody of someone who had been his friend in his own Universe - was laughing with delight at the power his Time Lord body reluctantly relinquished into the machine. He was struggling, at the moment, just to keep his breathing going, just to keep his hearts beating.

Ironically posed by the extended coils, he knew he must look like a mad crucifixion and in a way, he supposed that suited as well. Except he supposed he should be upside down, since he was dying for his own sins, and not the sins of the world.

A shadow flickered at the edge of his vision and he welcomed it with bitter relief. They had been keeping company for a long time now, the shadow and him, and it had always been a matter of time before the shadow came at last for him, instead of taking everything around him and leaving him alone and grieving in the center of the devastation. He bowed his head and would have murmured the appropriate words, had not his brain's connection to his speech centers been the first things shorted out.

The shadow moved again and he was forced to raise his head as it resolved itself into a terribly familiar shape.

"No," he whispered, when he really meant to scream. "Rose. No."

She shook her golden head and ignored him.

_Not again, please, not again, not Rose._

Their years of separation had changed the girl he loved into someone who confused and baffled him, but who delighted him with her continued brilliance and utterly human compassion. She had grown and changed, his Rose, but she was still his Rose in there, full of wonder and joy, in love with life.

In love with him, though, that he hadn't had a chance to find out.

They'd been running since the minute they'd met again and, although he'd found her strange, he still found her wonderful. And now she was back, to do what Rose Tyler would always have done - sacrificed everything on the slimmest, wildest chance to save him.

"You're too late," the Doctor's adversary spoke. "Soon, the Last of the Time Lords will be nothing more than a power source to get me off this unholy rock."

It didn't matter how often it was done, they always thought their victorious evil speech was unique. If it didn't look very much like this evil would succeed for once, the Doctor might have been amused. Rose, he noted vaguely, had no such compunction.

"You lot're all the same, ya know that?" she said, scathingly. "Stupid bastards, you all think you've got 'im and in the end, somethin' always gets you." Her accent had gone thick and her voice was like ice.

She moved with blindingly fast speed. He supposed his brain had gone too slow now, if he couldn't even see how she got from one place to another. She raised a hand, brandishing a sonic screwdriver - where had she gotten that? - and lowered it to the machine that was drawing the energy of his life force out through the coils.

His enemy chased after her, but she got the coils separated from the machine. The energy began to discharge, some of it floating loose into surrounding space, some of it backlashing into the machine. It lit up like a laser canon on overload and he started to feel the strength returning to his body.

He concentrated and dragged the loose energy into himself. It started out a slow trickle and took all his mental strength.

Rose grappled with his attacker. He had a hand clenched tight around her throat, shrieking curses into her face. She writhed and twisted in his grip, then broke free suddenly. The Doctor could do nothing more than stare in horror as the fight escalated before him.

The enemy brought out a pistol and took several shots at Rose. She dropped and dodged and rolled toward him. "All right?" she gasped breathlessly.

He tried to say something, anything, but his mouth wouldn't work. He nodded, helpless, and the energy began to course back into him at a faster rate of speed.

Rose vaulted to her feet - the gymnastics training again, he supposed - and aimed a high, impossible kick, not at the attacker, but at his machine.

Time slowed to a bitter crawl as the attacker leapt to the edge to try to catch it. It tumbled and then, ever so slowly, began to topple.

The Doctor felt triumph adding to his own energy and, slowly, began to move. He tugged at the coils and they started to break apart. Temporal and quantum energy fluxing through them had made them as brittle as ribbon candy.

The attacker wobbled on the edge of the roof, shrieked, and fell. Rose turned toward the Doctor.

He would always remember her in that moment. She was grinning with such triumph, her bosom heaving as she gasped for air, her rich brown eyes dark and sparkling. He shattered the last of the coils, determined to make a leap toward his Rose, hug her, hold her, never let her go. Her face was so beautiful, like a light, shining in the darkness.

He loved her. More than anything.

A hand shot up over the edge of the building. Rose gave one startled gasp, rounded, caught the hand and started pulling.

The Doctor raced toward her.

The unseen attacker jerked hard on Rose's arm.

She cried out in outrage, fury, horror. Then, she lost her balance. He reached for her desperately.

_Not Rose, not again, please not Rose._

One last look, a look brim full of such overwhelming love, it shattered both his hearts like so much glass, and then she fell, plummeting eight stories to the lawn below.

He would never remember what he shouted to the naked stars above him. He screamed, though, until his throat hurt almost as much as the rest of him. He would never remember how he'd gotten off the building, either, but he was there, at her side, where he belonged.

She was gasping for breath, clinging to the last seconds of air and life, fighting, even now, just for one more minute. He touched her mind and found it chaos, so he withdrew and clutched desperately at her hand. "Don't leave me again," he pleaded, oblivious of the tears streaking down his face. "Please, please, don't. Rose. My Rose!"

She smiled faintly. "My Doctor," she whispered and closed her rich brown eyes for the last time.

She was gone.

_Dead._

He lifted her body and carried her the last few feet to the TARDIS. The temptation was killing him, ripping him apart.

He laid her down on the grated floor, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

What had the Universe ever done for him, anyway?

He reached over and grimly began to set coordinates.

A blinding, golden light behind him froze his hands, froze his body, froze his mind. He turned slowly, almost not daring to look.

Rose's slender form was bathed in that brilliant, familiar light. His hands clenched. No no no...

**YES!**

Her face blurred and slowly came back into focus, ethereally beautiful, still, small. Her hands reached, elegant and dainty. Her eyes fluttered briefly.

Her chest rose. Fell. Rose again.

He threw himself down next to her, awed and more afraid than he had ever been in his life.

He clutched her little hand. It didn't quite feel right, not yet. His fingers brushed downward, searching.

There. Thready but certain, inexorable as the tide. The ever strengthening double rhythm beat steady and reassuring beneath his questing fingers.

He leaned over her and gave in to the torrent of emotion tumbling through him. Pain and rage and fear and gratitude, all surmounted by boundless, endless love, it all began to pour forth from his eyes in a flood of icy tears that could have drowned the world.

Then, in that dark, abandoned corner of his mind, her voices came dancing, came singing. Shadows backed away from the blazing sparkle of her merry laughter. He'd thought, how long, that it was the absence of all of them that made the desolation. But a single thread wove peace into the entire framework, a single rose blossomed the whole desert.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he gasped out.

She clutched his hand tight and her eyes flew open. "Tell you what?" she asked.

He just leaned back and looked at her. Her eyes were bright and clear and beautiful, shining, shimmering gold. "Am I dead?" she asked.

He sobbed. "Oh, no, my precious Rose. You're alive. So alive!"

"Good," she said softly.

He winked at her. "You're not ginger, either," he added.

She reached up her slender hand and tugged a long lock of chestnut around where she could look at it. "New hair," she mused aloud. "That's weird."

He grinned and nodded and ached to pull her close. She sat up slowly, as though the world might collapse at any moment - he was familiar with the sensation and reached out to help her.

"Out of curiosity," she said, "why would I be ginger?"

"Uh oh," he said.

"What?"

He reached into a pocket and rummaged for a mirror. She glowered at him, but the glower was quickly replaced by a new expression that it took him a moment to connect with worry - he'd been so used to her chewing on her lip.

"What?" she demanded.

He found the mirror and handed it to her.

She held it up and looked at it, considering for a moment, then her eyes went wide and huge with astonishment. "**WHAT!**"

_And how're we going to tell Jackie?_ he added silently.


	10. The South Park Ending

**The South Park Ending**

**_AKA: The Only Force in the Universe Even the Doctor Can't Conquer_**

* * *

The spaceships blasted into the sky and Jack fell over, charred beyond recognition and stone dead besides.

"You killed Jack!" Rose shouted at the retreating aliens. "BASTARDS!!!!"

"Oh dear," said a voice off to the left, wandering into the desolated waste. "She can't say that, can she?"

"No, I'm afraid not."

The Doctor stepped between the group of people who suddenly appeared and a seething Rose Tyler. "Shhh," he soothed. "Just, whatever you do, keep quiet."

"But..." she said.

"No, please, you have to," he whispered, his voice sounding... was that... afraid??

Rose sighed and nodded, still staring in horror at Jack's smoldering corpse.

The group had reached the three from the TARDIS now and were considering them closely. The Doctor stood there, looking like Rose had never, ever seen him look in his entire life. He was pale and trembly and trying his level best to screen her from view.

But they looked completely human. How was this remotely possible?

A member of the group nudged Jack with his toe and the immortal man groaned softly. Rose couldn't help herself. She flung herself down next to him and tried to get him to wake up, say something, tell her he was still alive after all.

The whatever-they-weres that scared the Doctor reached over and two of them snatched her up by her arms as if she was weightless. She tried to struggle and break free but then she didn't and she couldn't figure out why.

"What's going on, what are you?" she demanded.

"No, no, young lady. It's off to Torchwood with you. Potty mouth like that, you'll simply have to go."

"I don't want to!" she pleaded. "Not again!"

"No, this Torchwood," said one of the others, quite kindly. "Think of all the new dynamics. You can even shag Owen."

"No!" she shrieked. Horror beyond horrors. She was never, ever sleeping with the bloke everyone loved to hate. "I want to stay here, where I belong, with my Doctor."

"Jack can stay with the Doctor," the short one in the glasses promised. "We'll make you the new head of Torchwood Three. How 'bout Ianto? You can have Ianto."

"He likes Cybergirls!" she exclaimed. She reached for the Doctor and he tried to take her hands, but they just, somehow, slipped away.

"Gwen?" a woman in a very nice suit offered.

"No!" Rose said, then thought about it. "Well... No!"

"We'll let you say 'Wanker'," the bloke in glasses promised.

"I..." Rose paused. "Can I shoot things?"

"Lots of things."

"But..."

"If you take Rose and leave Jack," said the Doctor, "who're you gonna kill every other week?" He had such a reasonable, pleading tone in his voice. He wasn't even trying for harsh, he was trying for groveling. She wondered if he'd break something doing that.

"We'll hold off," said the one in glasses firmly. "We'll wait 'til the grand finale and have someone pop a cap in Rose. Two seconds before we fade to black, we'll have just a vague shot of a woman wearing what she was last seen in, racing across the Plaza."

"Yeah," said another, "but that'll be tough."

"I know," agreed the one in glasses, "but think of all the opportunities for getting Jack randomly killed by aliens!"

"Oooh, good point," said several.

"Can we have real aliens then? Like the Sycorax?"

"Oh, sure. Oooh, and I just thought. Rose and Martha aren't going to get on so well, are they!"

"Oh, that's a brilliant idea, I like it," agreed the one in glasses. He was apparently the one in charge. "So, that's that then. C'mon, Rose. We'll just need to get you back so we can get started on your new story."

"Hey," suggested the young bloke at the back, "how about if she tries to pretend to be Jack for the first couple of episodes, just to confuse everyone?"

"Good idea," agreed the woman.

"Oh, and Gwen figures it out," agreed the glasses leader bloke. "We can have more telepathic Gwen hints that way."

Still discussing, they dragged a struggling, kicking Rose across the landing strip and out of sight. The Doctor, resigned that he had lost for a time, sank to his knees next to Jack, bawling.

"What was that?" Jack asked after a moment. He came back to life, then, fully beautiful, not even a hair out of place.

"The only force in the Universe even I have no power over."

"The Eternals?" Jack breathed, astonished. He'd always figured the Eternals were more... amorphous. And other-worldly. These were just a bunch of people on what looked for all the world like a coffee break.

"No," the Doctor said, and hung his head in bitter defeat. "The Writers."


	11. The Dallas Ending

**The Dallas Ending**

**_AKA: Sob Once Upon A Dream_**

_(Based on an odd interview given by Mr. Tennant.)_

* * *

The Doctor stood at last before the vicar, with Rose in her soft, pale wedding dress, smiling up at him with love and devotion in her eyes. Jack stood as best man, and Mickey and Pete were there, too, and Martha and Donna and Shireen were Rose's bride's maids. Everything was positively perfect.

Sarah Jane was watching bravely from the pews next to Rose's mother, who for once was only bawling her head off, not biting his head off.

The Doctor wore red sneakers with his tux and had the sonic screw driver in his top pocket. Other than that, and the vague shadows in the back of the church that suggested that nine men were sitting in the pews watching him with expressions ranging from dubious all the way up to murderous jealousy, every thing seemed perfectly normal.

Even if the ring bearer was a robot dog.

* * *

"Do you Rose, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband..."

"I do."

* * *

"Do you, erm... Doctor, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife..."

"I do."

"_Fantastic_," murmured a voice from the back.

* * *

"If any man can show just cause why these two should not be joined in the bonds of holy matrimony, let him speak now or forever hold his peace."

Jack's blaster was trained at Mickey's side. The Doctor had noticed that earlier. And Pete had a pistol trained on Jack.

"Just 'cause he's an alien," Rose mouthed, teasing.

* * *

"I am proud to introduce for the first time, The Doctor and Mrs. erm... oh, bother. The Doctor, and his bride, Rose Tyler."

* * *

There was rice in his shoe, and streamers in his hair, but he was dancing with his Rose. That was really all that mattered. Everything they had gone through for the past several weeks since she arrived was terrible, but over, and now he could hold her, hold on to her, forever. He tugged her close and kissed her as their first dance ended. He kissed her with desperation and longing and all the love he had wanted to tell her about since the day they had parted oh so long ago.

"Forever," she breathed.

"Forever," he agreed, softly. Then, because it was time at last, "I love you."

"Doctor," said Jack from somewhere close by. The Doctor looked around but didn't see him.

"Doctor," said Martha, even closer. The Doctor looked for her, too, she sounded frantic.

"What is it?" said Rose.

"I don't know," he said. "But I'll ignore it."

"You can't, you know," she said softly. "You'll always have to stop and save the Universe."

"Yeah, but you'll be with me and it'll be fine, that way."

She grinned. "It's all I could wish for," she agreed. "I don't ever want to wake up."

"What?" he said.

"This is a dream," she whispered, her eyes suddenly burning gold. "Didn't you know?"

"What?" he demanded, now, terrified, and clutching at her tightly as the dancers began to fade.

"What!" he shouted.

"Doctor!" Jack called.

"Doctor, please!" Martha, even more frantic than before.

"I love you," said Rose's voice, but Rose was fading as she spoke. "My Doctor."

"My Rose," he whispered as two realities collided and he sat up.

* * *

Jack and Martha looked at his stricken face as he blinked back at them, tears pouring unchecked down his cheeks. He tried to smile shakily at them, but it wouldn't come.

They moved to throw themselves at him, but he stood abruptly, took one look around the Console Room at the complete absence of Rose, once again, and hurled himself into the TARDIS corridors, trying desperately to run **FROM** his life. Inside he was thinking that maybe, just maybe, if he ran far enough and hard enough, her hand would be there, locked inside his own.


	12. The Hollywood Blockbuster

**The Hollywood Blockbuster Ending Version 1.0**

**_AKA: Considering What They Pulled Last Time..._**

_

* * *

Setting: Inside smoke-filled, burning, charred, and over-the-top formatted TARDIS_

**Doctor:** Thank heavens you were here, Rose. Thanks to your unspeakable beauty and my unimaginable brain, we have defeated -Insert Impossible Villain Here- !

_(Notes: Impossible Villain should be Time Lord known to be dead long before this point, or Time Lord who died by unlikely means at the beginning of the movie. I fancy Saliavin - since he wasn't even a bad guy in canon - or Morbius - since even Time Lords stupid enough to resurrect the Master wouldn't be THAT stupid. Oooh, or that loser, Cardinal Hedin. That would be ridiculous!)_

**Rose:** The TARDIS! She's HURT! The TRAGEDY!

**Doctor:** I'll just use a very, very old, miraculous, and non-sensical technique to repair her. But first, Rose... -Leans over to whisper in her ear, grinning wolfishly-

**Rose:** -Heart in her eyes- Oh, Doctor! -Leans over to whisper in his ear, smiling seductively-

_(Notes: Background music turns interesting. Should be something romantic and beautiful by John Mayer. More likely to be new West Life edition of a crap tune by Air Supply.)_

**Doctor:** -Pulls Rose close- I've been meaning to do this for a long time!

-Hollywood dramatic kiss, full contact, tongues and all-

**Doctor:** -Picks up Rose-

**Rose:** -giggles-

_(Notes: Scenes that follow should be interspersed with archive footage of their interaction, air-brushed, if necessary. The more Youtube, the better.)_

-Doctor carries Rose down smoking, blazing, strangely decorated and unfamiliar corridors-

-Fade to black-

-Fade into delicately beautiful bed in the midst of the wreckage. Love scene, carefully choreographed to show Rose's breasts at least once, the Doctor's backside at least twice, quite a few highly suggestive facial expressions and more than one soft, erotic noise. Silver-blue glow should be seen to be coming into existence around their bodies.-

_(Notes: Appropriate scenes of previous interactions should continue throughout love scene. TARDIS corridors should also be shown coming back together, repairing damage, clearing smoke, clearing damage, all under the influence of silver-blue glow.)_

**Rose:** Doctor!

**Doctor:** Rose!

-Fade to black-

-Fade into sleeping couple curled together in bed in room that is now in one piece. Golden light appears around Rose.-

**Rose:** -vanishes without a sound-

**Doctor:** -Wakes immediately- Rose? -Melodramatic expression, close up of tragic, somehow fully clothed Doctor- ROSE!!!!

-Door flies open. Jack and Bonus-Companion-for-Real-Star-Power-as-Played-By-Hugh-Grant-or-Someone-Else-Just-as-Unlikely enter at speed-

**Doctor:** -Is upset-

**Jack:** What's happened?

**Bonus-Companion:** We can't find Rose.

**Doctor: **She was here. -Thumps pillow, pulls it close, looks tragic- She was RIGHT here!

**Jack:** -twinkle, grin, wink-

**Doctor:** -Stormy-eyed glare- Something's taken her, Jack! We have to find her!

**Bonus-Companion:** -Sheepish smile- You slept with an alien?

**Jack:** -Cheeky wink- So did you!

**Bonus-Companion:** -Blush-

-Close up of Doctor's face, looking angry, dangerous, and hollow eyed- 

**Doctor:** I will find you, my Rose! I am the Last of the Time Lords and I have powers beyond the dreams of human kind. No force in all this Universe can keep you from me. I will find you and we will be together, forever! I swear by Rassilon, Omega, and my own mysterious and ancient secrets! I swear on the power that burned all Gallifrey! In the name of the Oncoming Storm, I will find you and we will never be parted again!

_(Notes: The Doctor has never ever sworn by Rassilon. He is not noted to have sworn at him, either. Therefore, this is necessary for a Hollywood Blockbuster.)_

-Fade to black, roll credits-


	13. Never Quite Gone

**_As I am a professional writer and have work to do to get paid, I have decided to deal with these thudding plot bunnies in the traditional manner - I will inflict them on others. Please see my Profile for the Challenges of the Month. The first set will run through the end of March. Please let me know when you respond to a Challenge so I can read and review.

* * *

_Never Quite Gone**

**_AKA: The Even Odds Ending_**

a/n: I'm calling it even odds because this is one of the possibilities I actually believe.

* * *

He lay Rose's battered body on the console room floor, trying to be careful, even though he knew she no longer felt pain. Her neck had been snapped, her body was shutting down, system by system, there was absolutely nothing he could do to save her. 

_Bringer of Darkness._

_Ka Faraq Gatri._

_Destroyer of Worlds._

The titles thudded against his skull, pounding, pounding, rhythmic and pitch black.

_Valeyard._

_He could almost hear drums._

The titles that were and would and could be his were beating his soul into submission to their shadows, their bleak and incessant call to surrender his life to their abomination of hate.

_Theta means Thanatos._

_That's Death._

**That's ME.**

"Doctor," Rose breathed.

For her, for what she was, for what she knew, he stopped. Let the Universe fall down outside, sure, but he didn't have to help it along. He was, first and foremost, the Doctor.

Just as she said.

He couldn't fix her, but maybe, just for her, he could remember that he could fix everything else. He knelt beside her, clutching her hand to hold his sanity in place. "Rose?" he whispered.

She smiled, a smile to light up the whole Universe.

In fact, it did light up, growing brighter, more staggering and brilliant with every heart beat. No, that was the whole world shaking apart. What was happening?

The light grew golden and blinding. He clenched his eyes closed and still he could see it, red through his eyelids. The shaking increased exponentially, flinging them about and her fragile, broken body couldn't endure it.

He shouted at the Universe to stop, but it had never listened to him, ever, not once. He clutched at her hand but it was torn from his grip. He was flung unceremoniously against the nearest column, with a sickening crunch as the light grew suddenly brighter than day.

He lost consciousness to the sound of Time, in all its wonder and terror, singing.

When he woke, he was stiff and sore but (unfortunately?) alive. He staggered blearily to his feet, and looked for her body. It was gone. He let out a yell of rage and pain, stalking toward the console without any certain thought what he planned to do.

What stopped him was the sound of a familiar giggle.

He looked around, horrified and hopeful, and saw Rose, standing there, bright and beautiful, her eyes glittering in the light of the console. "What?" he whispered. "How?"

"The TARDIS," she said, her voice changed to have a strange echo in it, one he had heard before. "We've changed."

"What?"

"I looked into the TARDIS," she said. "And the TARDIS looked into me. We are the TARDIS and we are Rose and we must be."

"But Rose, you... what have you done?!" He thumped a fist down on the console and she winced.

"Don't do that," she said. "It's uncomfortable and it makes us want to drop you somewhere annoying."

He snorted, almost startled into laughter at the odd pronouncement, even against his better judgement. "I don't understand," he admitted, while she just smiled at him, tenderness too deep for description in her vivid eyes.

"I am her and she is me and we are. We shall ever be. I promised you forever, my Doctor. But a mortal body can't give forever. Now I can. Now we can."

"You're..." He stopped, because he was choking on his own words, because there were tears just swimming in his eyes, practically blinding him.

"Never really gone. Not any more. I'll always be here, when you need me, when you want me. We are one, she and I, and we will never leave you."

The tears spilled freely down his face. "I didn't want this," he breathed.

"I wanted to stay with you," she said, and he knew this was Rose, Rose alone. "My Doctor."

An inarticulate sob tore from his chest and he reached for her. Her hand fitted to his perfectly, her body felt warm and alive as she curled into him.

Then, the texture faded. He looked at her - or half-through her - in astonishment.

"We need to recharge," she said, softly. "Give us a few hours to rest in the Vortex." Then, she grinned beautifully and he wanted to fall into that smile and drown in it. "We'll be back soon." She faded like the cheshire cat, huge brown eyes and glorious smile the very last things to go.

He collapsed to his knees, not certain now whether to cry or grin. She was no longer human, but she was forever.

She briefly reappeared. "Gonna put a whole new angle on you stroking the console, innit?" she said cheekily, tongue poking through her teeth, then vanished again.

He laughed helplessly. What else could he possibly do? For as long as they all lived, Rose Tyler, his precious Rose, would bloom forever from the Heart of the TARDIS.


	14. Consolation Prizes

**_As I am a professional writer and have work to do to get paid, I have decided to deal with these thudding plot bunnies in the traditional manner - I will inflict them on others. Please see my Profile for the Challenges of the Month. The first set will run through the end of March. Please let me know when you respond to a Challenge so I can read and review. Thanks to everyone who's already taken a shot at one or more of them!_**

* * *

**The Consolation Prizes Ending**

**_AKA: Never Drinking That Again_**

_(because this one is just stupid, and I've no idea where it came from otherwise...)_

It looked like the Game Station. It smelled like the Game Station. It had Bad Wolf logos all over the place like the Game Station.

However, it was mercifully Dalek free.

Still, it was incredibly realistic. In fact, except for the Daleks, it contained several things it had before. One hyper-intelligent, sentient box, blue, annoyed and unable to articulate said fact. One Time Lord, blushing several shades of pink that are only found in 96-color boxes of Crayola crayons. One immortal Jack Harkness, dressed in silly clothes and well aware of that fact. One Rose Tyler, all of the above.

It also contained one distressed Martha Jones and one thoroughly infuriated Sarah-Jane Smith.

"Well, it looks like our Bachelor has chosen Bachelorette Number One. However, before we whisk them off with their lovely prizes - one time-travelling blue box and one immortal sex-god - we have consolation prizes for our lovely runners-up."

"Look, I'm over this," Sarah-Jane said sternly. "I don't want a consolation prize. Can you imagine trying to have sex with a man who turns up looking different every time you see him? And not remembering you once met him older than dirt or five foot tall?"

"Well, then, pushy Bachelorette Number Three, you can have what's behind this curtain." A large red curtain appeared off to the left. Abruptly, it was swept away by some cutely smiling, over-detailed girly androids. "A tin dog and a story of your own!"

"Finally," she muttered, got out of her chair, took her tin dog and whisked off into her own story where she never had to worry about Time Lords who couldn't tell the difference between Aberdeen and... well, anywhere, actually.

"And for you, Bachelorette Number Two, we have the bare facts."

"I don't want them," said Martha Jones. "I saved the world, and that's enough for me."

"First, we have this lovely t-shirt."

"Fantastic," said Martha, dryly.

"It says 'I saved the world and the Last of the Time Lords and all I got was this stupid t-shirt and some lovely consolation prizes.'"

"I said I didn't want it."

"We also have your poem, autographed by the Bard himself. 'My true love's face is nothing like the sun...'"

"What?" said Martha.

"Oh, you know. Dark Lady of the Sonnets? Mr. Shakespeare's secret passion? That's you!"

She looked utterly floored. "What?" she whispered.

"We also have a love letter from some bloke on a space ship. He went on to become the most famous musician of his era. Wrote fifty songs. All about you."

"What?"

"And one Tom Milligan, a man of your own. Shares your profession, your dreams, and look, girl, you know for a fact the bloke would die for you!"

Martha stood, flung her arms around Tom, and snogged him senseless. Then, they vanished in a puff of smoke.

"So, off you go then, Rose Tyler. You win Time, Time Lord, ex-Time Agent, and Time Machine. What're you going to do now?"

"Wake up," Rose said, grumpily, and did.

She was lying on the floor in Mickey's flat. Looked like he and Jake were going to be very sorry when they woke up, since whatever the hell happened last night had ended up with them cuddled up together and looking adorable.

She sighed. That had been some weird dream.

Who was that girl, anyway?

She groaned and looked at the bottle of Arcturan brandy in her hand. It was mostly empty. She got up to pour it down the drain. If she was dreaming she was back where she belonged, it was one thing, but this was something entirely other. She decided, then and there, that she was never, ever, drinking that stuff again.


	15. Another Likely Ending

**_As I am a professional writer and have work to do to get paid, I have decided to deal with these thudding plot bunnies in the traditional manner - I will inflict them on others. Please see my Profile for the Challenges of the Month. The first set will run through the end of March. Please let me know when you respond to a Challenge so I can read and review. Thanks to everyone who has participated so far! Keep it up!

* * *

_**

**Another Likely Ending**

**_AKA: I'd Like to Wager Ten Pounds_**

"Welcome back, Martian," said Donna Noble, smiling kindly as the newly reappeared Doctor studied himself to make sure all his bits (did he have bits? Donna didn't actually want to know, come to think of it). Anyway, making sure everything that was supposed to be there was there.

"Thank you, Donna. Still not from Mars, by the way."

"No, I've seen them," said Sarah Jane Smith. "They looked nothing like him."

"Sarah Jane, you're here, too!"

She grinned and nodded. "Couldn't very well leave you non-existant, could I? And Martha here was having a fit."

"Oh, Martha Jones, you're brilliant!" He beamed at them all, his friends and Companions and they all smiled back, except the one hiding behind Martha, because she was, as Donna had noticed, still hiding. "So, how'd you bring me back?"

"Well, Martha and me," began Donna...

"Donna and I had..." said Martha, at exactly the same time.

"The girls landed in..." said Sarah Jane, shaking her head at the memory.

"Never mind," said the Doctor, laughing. "C'mere!" He held his arms out, apparently expecting a group hug. Martha, eager and excited, moved toward him and, in the process, revealed the fourth Companion, the one who hadn't wanted him to know she was here.

"Oh, and, yeah," Donna said, trying to stay cheerful as she watched the Doctor's face go stark white, like cold oatmeal. "Rose was very helpful, too."

Rose, in her pale nimbus, was still turned away from him, refusing to move, refusing to even look at him.

"Rose?" he breathed, softly, his voice harsh with old pain.

She turned then, those gold eyes vivid and filled with tears. "Hello," she said, her voice barely a whisper.

"Rose?" he said again and then, all at once, he was half-way across the console room, right in front of her, his hands clenching and unclenching, as though he was desperate to touch her.

Donna looked at Martha and saw her shaking her head, tears streaming from her eyes. She had no idea what it was like to be any of them, but right at the moment, she figured she would most have hated to be Martha Jones.

Or possibly the Doctor, because he really, really wasn't going to like this.

"It's just hard," said Martha very, very softly. Sarah Jane nodded and took her hand. Martha looked up at her and smiled, trusting the older woman far more than she had ever trusted the blonde shadow.

"I'm sorry," said Rose. "It's just an image. No touch."

The Doctor looked exceptionally hurt by this. It must be familiar. But everything she said and did was going to be familiar, after all. "Can't you come through, properly?" he asked, as if he was reciting a formula, one that was more painful than anything Donna could imagine.

She smiled. "I'm an echo," she said. "An after-image. From where I looked into the TARDIS. She kept the image and updated it. Otherwise, I'd still be expecting that leather jacket, and then where would we be?"

"Having a conversation about 'sort of brown' and 'rude and not ginger', I expect," he said, trying for humor and managing only to sound as if he was forcing himself not to cry. "And zippers, I definitely remember zippers."

She forced a grin for him, and Donna could see it was quite a pretty grin, even if it was marred by tears pouring unchecked down her intangible cheek. "I'm part of the emergency protocol," she said. "At least for now. 'Til you find another mad shop-girl stupid enough to absorb the time vortex."

"There'll never be another like you, Rose Tyler."

"But promise me you'll still take the best?"

"I already have," he agreed, turning to look at Donna, Martha, even Sarah.

"Yes," she said, smiling fondly at the women who'd gotten to know her so well.

"There's no point, I suppose, telling you..."

"I knew," she said. "I always knew."

"I just wish..."

"Me too," she said. Her image crackled and started to fade even as they watched. "Sorry," she breathed. "I have to go, now." Her hand, even if he could never feel it, brushed his face. Her soft voice came one last time. "I love you, Doctor." Then it and she were gone.

The Doctor turned away, turned to the console. He looked down at the dials, buttons, and levers before him. "Thank you," he whispered, and anyone could tell he was talking to his ship.

He sniffed and Donna hurt for him, but it would never do to let him sink into that depression again. Just as she moved to say something or do something to take his mind off it, he looked up, that manic gleam back in his eyes, that huge grin plastered over his face. It was forced, sure, but there, and it would have to do. "So, what do you say? One trip to say thank you?"

"Not me," said Martha, softly. "I'm needed back home."

"And I've got a planet to defend," Sarah Jane reminded him.

"Right," he said, briskly, trying to hide his obvious disappointment. "Cardiff first. Sarah can meet Jack... oooh, this'll be fun."

Sarah Jane rolled her eyes. "Captain Jack?" she said. "We've met."

"Oh," said the Doctor, disappointed.

"Don't worry," said Donna, "he said he'd buy you a drink when you got back."

Nobody had any idea why the Doctor's eyes widened at that statement, or why he managed to land the TARDIS three miles outside of Cardiff instead of in it. But maybe there was a small flicker of light near the jump seat, and maybe that light gave off a small, girlish giggle.

Or maybe not. You could never be sure with the TARDIS.


	16. Rose Tyler, Super Star

****

_**As I am a professional writer and have work to do to get paid, I have decided to deal with these thudding plot bunnies in the traditional manner - I will inflict them on others. Please see my Profile for the Challenges of the Month. New challenges for April! The new set will run through the end of April. Please let me know when you respond to a Challenge so I can read and review.**_

* * *

Rose Tyler, Super-star

**AKA: Misapprehensions of the Universe**

It was on occasions such as this, when they had done something not merely beyond the pale, but in fact beyond the stark white and bloodless, that the Doctor wondered why he'd only twice wiped out the entire perverse race of self-righteous, bloody-minded hypocrites.

Admittedly, he also wondered how they'd managed to turn up yet again for him to have to wonder this, but he had a lot on his mind, so he felt he could be forgiven for deciding to leave that for later.

"Let me get this straight. You're going back, but not to Pete's World's Earth," the Doctor said slowly.

Rose beamed at him and nodded. "Yes. Exactly."

"And the planet is called 'New Gallifrey'."

"That's what they told me it translates as, yeah."

"OK." He clutched at the console merely to keep him trembling hands from showing. "And you are happy there because you're..."

"Famous, yeah."

"Famous because..."

"I'm pretty." She grinned, her cute pink tongue poking through her teeth. "Last survey, seventy-five percent of the population agreed that I'm the prettiest thing on two legs."

"Seventy-five percent of the population is male?" he asked.

"Didn't say that, did I?" she asked cheekily.

He groaned aloud for a large variety of reasons, several of which he couldn't articulate without dipping into Jack's vocabulary.

"See, I always thought, from everything you said and did, that you were pretty much kind of asexual. Well, I mean except Madame du Pompadour, but I figured that was because she was sex on legs and the only way you could communicate with her was snogging and dancing and stuff. Even if you claimed you've... danced, and stuff. You didn't with me, so I guess I thought it was just a Time Lord thing - no humans, or no bottle blondes, or maybe no Rose Tylers, how should I know? But there's this whole planet full of them and I have to beat 'em off with sticks. It's brilliant." She looked at him carefully. "Are you gay, then?"

"Ask Jack," he replied with a sigh.

"Jack thinks you're kinda asexual, too," she said. "He figured if he couldn't get in your pants, and I couldn't get in your pants, no one could. I asked Sarah Jane, too, you know."

He groaned again, this time to keep from exercising his own unabridged dictionary of profanity.

"She thinks you're asexual, too. And Martha Jones, too, though she said you're one hell of a snogger, and I wondered why she got a snog and I didn't, but I guess it's 'cause she's older'n me or something, since you figured I was a wee nekkid child."

"I told Queen Victoria you were a child."

"And she believed you? I was the same age she was when she got married. Half her daughters were married younger'n me. Figure she bought it 'cuz you believed it."

"I do have more than eight centuries on you," he regretfully admitted.

"Hah. There's this one bloke... um... oh, what is his name. Um. Spandrel. Nice bloke, looks hot in his current regeneration. He's like two thousand or something and he told me point blank he wants to shag me up against a wall."

The view screen opened behind them and the mentioned Time Lord appeared on the screen. "Are you ready to come back, Rose, sweetheart?"

"Gimme a few more minutes," she requested, and the love-struck older Time Lord nodded with a dopey smile.

The Doctor glowered at him. "What happened to decorum?" he demanded. "Behavior unbecoming a Time Lord? Proper treatment of companions? No humans on Gallifrey? Any of that??"

Spandrel shrugged. "Have you looked at her, Doctor?"

"Have I..." The Doctor shrieked and swore, chiming, angry bell tones falling from his lips, an entire discordant symphony of harsh Gallifreyan dissonance. "And in conclusion, I hate you all," he added in English.

"We love you, too," Spandrel told him. "Will you send back our pink and yellow princess or are we going to have to do something annoying to you?"

"Am I sending her back?" he said. He looked at the Time Lord on the screen, then turned to Rose, his eyes so dark they were like empty pits. "Oh I'll send her back to you," he said. "In a little while. If she still wants to go." He closed the view screen, never taking his eyes from her. "Proper Time Lords are not meant to behave in this manner toward humans or companions or anyone for that matter." Then, he stalked toward her, snatched her up, and flung her over his shoulder while she shrieked and giggled and kicked fetchingly.

He snorted. "Asexual indeed," he muttered, kicked open the interior door and, still carrying his struggling burden, stalked off to correct the misapprehensions of the Universe.


	17. The Clone Rose

_**As I am a professional writer and have work to do to get paid, I have decided to deal with these thudding plot bunnies in the traditional manner - I will inflict them on others. Please see my Profile for the Challenges of the Month. New challenges for April! The new set will run through the end of April. Please let me know when you respond to a Challenge so I can read and review.**_

* * *

**The Clone Rose**

**_AKA: The Top Secret Villain Ending_**

"I'm not really Rose Tyler," said the girl with Rose's face. She didn't have Rose's gentleness or Rose's beauty of movement. She was a stalking animal, now, and she had Jack and the Doctor pinned.

"We knew that," said Jack, coldly. He was counting on this, expecting to piss her off. "We knew, all along. You didn't fool us for even a minute - we fooled you."

She pulled the trigger, two bullets right to the chest. Jack had time to look at her and the Doctor with pity, and then he dropped like a lead sinker. "One down," she whispered, a cold mockery of Rose's sweet tone. "One to go." She stuck a different gun under the Doctor's nose, an impulse laser.

He frowned at it. It was a temporal anomaly, a weapon of last resort on Gallifrey, designed to disrupt the regeneration process. He knew, but she didn't, that it wouldn't work any more. Without the Matrix, there was nothing for the processes to scramble to, so they would remain in place. Still, he rather liked his current body.

Jack was slowly bleeding out at his feet. He had to delay her. "Where did you come from?" he asked gently, using the soft, kind voice that the part of her that was Rose might respond to.

The brown eyes wavered for only a split second, then narrowed and hardened. "I'll ask the questions!" she shouted. "How the hell did you know? I'm perfect, an exact replica of Rose Tyler at twenty-two years old."

"Twenty one, actually," he corrected. "We missed a year." He took a risk and let his hand trail up the back of his neck. "And you're not, not really." Jack would bear witness to this, then, because the life still hadn't deserted his body. Well, that was fitting, who better? He looked her carefully in the eye, the deep, rich brown a cruel, perfect image of the pair that gazed on the Universe with wonder, its people with compassion, and on him with so much love. "I knew because I knew Rose Tyler. I love Rose Tyler."

Jack breathed his last.

"We knew that. That's why I was the perfect trap, designed to look and act just like your precious companion until this moment."

"It almost pulled you under, didn't it?" he said. "They left too much of her in you, your designers. Some of that wonder wasn't faked, and some of that feeling wasn't mockery. You could have become like her, in time."

"Never," she spat. Her benediction. "I'll never join you, I'd never trust you. I know what you are, alien filth, disrupting the world, trying to force other people to your view of what's right and wrong. Who died and made you God, anyway?"

"Rassilon," he answered, truthfully.

"What?"

"You asked who died and made me god. That's my answer. A genuine, recognized member of the Pantheon, a being whose will is reality. You asked. You didn't want to know, did you?"

"I... you're trying to trick me."

"I'm not," he said. "I don't lie to Rose, and you have her face. You could have had her heart as well. A poor substitute, but it would have been good for you."

"This is good for me. Torchwood is good for me, killing you is good for me."

"Oh, you're with Torchwood, I should have known." He sighed. "Last little experiment for the rag tag batch at Canary Wharf? Or are you with the famous, missing Torchwood Two?"

"Torchwood One," she said, proudly. "You tried to destroy us, but we survived."

"I didn't destroy you," he replied, coldly. "You destroyed yourselves. Trust me, if I had destroyed you, there wouldn't have been enough of Canary Wharf left to build a sandbox for the kiddies. Maybe we'd have cherry trees there, this time. Those are nice." She opened her mouth to argue, but he put up a hand. Time was drawing to a close. "Answer me this. If you're with Torchwood to know so much about me, why didn't you know anything about Torchwood Three?"

"What could I possibly want to know from a hole in the ground under Cardiff?" she shouted. "All I needed was the truth about you." She waved the pistol now, much more threateningly. "You're evil, you're subversive, and it's my job to destroy you."

"Sorry 'bout that, but I can't let you. I have a job to do and I'm an endangered species besides."

"Stop being flippant, this is serious!"

"Oh, I'm very serious. Because if you'd known about Torchwood Three, you'd've known about this."

He ducked just as she pulled the trigger. Jack vaulted to his feet, leveled his service revolver at her and squeezed off five rounds, rapid.

A circle of blood blossomed on her hand, the rest in her chest. She looked at him, mouth open, horrified. "Thank you," he said, softly. This was the face of the woman who he'd loved for more than two centuries, the face of the woman who had saved his life forever, the face of the woman he hated every single time death loosed its tenuous hold on him.

She crumbled to the floor, still, silent, all the fire and anger gone from those glorious eyes.

* * *

The Doctor and Jack stood, vigilant as soldiers at the Tomb of the Unknowns, watching the flames leap into the sky. The Doctor had insisted on a pyre for their would-be assassin, more, Jack thought, from respect and love for the face she wore, then for the necessity of destroying all trace of her genetic imprint.

"Remember Villengard?" Jack asked.

"Yep. Banana grove there, now." He smiled faintly. "I like bananas."

"I'll see Torchwood One join it by tomorrow," Jack assured him coldly. "Midnight at the latest."

"Thank you," said the Doctor.

They watched the fire. They watched each other. They watched the memories of the girl who didn't die who had the face of the one who did.

The Doctor had gotten, at last, to tell someone who could have been Rose Tyler that his love for her was true. And Jack had gotten to take out all his painful awakenings and bitter deaths on a woman with her face. He got to tell her thank you, too, because there was good in all the endlessness.

"How is it," he asked, "that even when we get some sort of closure, it's still sick?"

"Because that's all we deserve, you and I. Well, me for sure. All the torments of the damned for the souls I've doomed, the lives I've taken, the worlds I've killed. A life in hell for the mortal sins of a lapsed and heathen godling."

Jack took his hand and, though the Doctor flinched a little, he didn't draw away. "If you're a god, then, I'll have to be your disciple, because I'm well on my way to earning those torments myself."

"I'm sorry," the Doctor replied, the flames mirrored in his dark eyes, burning away worlds and lives and possibilities with every shift and blink. "I'm so sorry."


	18. The Correct Ending

_**As I am a professional writer and have work to do to get paid, I have decided to deal with these thudding plot bunnies in the traditional manner - I will inflict them on others. Please see my Profile for the Challenges of the Month. New challenges for April! The new set will run through the end of April. Please let me know when you respond to a Challenge so I can read and review.**_

* * *

**The Correct Ending**

**_AKA: Who Doesn't Think I Should Write for Doctor Who?_**

"So," said Rose. "That's... erm... that, then."

"Yeah," replied the Doctor, not looking up from the console. "So, that's erm... good, yeah?"

"Right," she agreed, nervously. "Very good. So... um... about the beach..."

"Hum? Beach... oh, the beach. Right, the beachy beach with the scary-either-way name. Right. Remember that." He scratched the back of his neck. "Never could forget it, actually, no matter what. Running along with Shakespeare and Martha, there's that beach. Cars in New Earth in the biggest traffic jam ever, there's that beach. Statue of Liberty, beach. You get the idea. New adventures all over space and time, that beach. The Master even tried to hypnotize it out of me once, the beach, I mean, but I don't know what he was thinking since he hasn't been able to do that little trick with me since we were seven. So, the beach. Erm... what about it?"

Rose just laughed lightly and shook her head. "C'mere," she said.

He wrapped her in a warm hug, the kind of hug they'd both been missing for ages. Oh there'd been other hugs and others to hug, but no hugs were given like his and no hugs were received like hers. He lifted her up and twirled her around and she giggled and grinned in his embrace.

It ended at last when he bumped against the console. She was close enough to him that her breath was brushing across his lips. He was a mere micro-second from kissing her, they both knew that.

He leaned back a little. "The beach," he said, a look in his eyes that was both resigned and hopeful. "I suppose, even though it's not my last chance to say it, Rose Tyler..." He leaned back further so he could smile deeply into her eyes.

There was a blinding flash of light off to the side and they both looked up.

Standing there, looking confused, a little hurt, and quite a bit angry, was the Doctor. Dark hair, dark jacket, dark blue eyes that seemed to hold all the secrets of the Universe. "What?" he demanded, accent thick and voice completely bewildered.

He glowered, so familiarly and thunderously at the little tableau before him that, like caught teenagers, the Doctor and Rose jumped about a foot apart. "What?" she breathed, hand over her mouth, eyes huge with astonishment.

The eye contact between the Time Lord and himself did not break, blue glaring into brown and brown looking wide and indignant right back. "What?" the newer Doctor demanded, all defensive and nervous at the same time.

Rose Tyler, her hand over her mouth and her toes curling at the ideas running rampant through her very human mind at the moment, giggled. The two Doctors stared at her, and she laughed even harder.

* * *

A/N: And there you have it, folks. All that lovely UST right back where it belongs, Rose and the Doctor still together and, just for fun, another Doctor to play with. See, hire me. We'd call the next episode "A Pair-Of-Docs"

If I hit the nail on the head, maybe they'll hire me. So that's why...


	19. Define Rose Tyler

**As I am a professional writer and have work to do to get paid, I have decided to deal with these thudding plot bunnies in the traditional manner - I will inflict them on others. Please see my Profile for the Challenges of the Month. New challenges for May have been added! Due to lack of response, at least one of April's will remain up. The new set will run through the end of May. Please let me know when you respond to a Challenge so I can read and review.**

A/N: In Doomsday, the Doctor randomly remarked about the Void: "The Eternals called it the Howling". Haven't heard much from or about Eternals since the Fifth Doctor. Given various references, I wondered... this is what happened, and I didn't expect it, but I hope you like it...

* * *

**Define Rose Tyler**

**_AKA: Was That a Hint, Russell?_**

Martha and Donna blinked nervously at each other, then turned back to consider the two at the console, who stood so close together, as if they could not resist. Their hands hovered maybe an inch apart from each other, yet they wouldn't even look at each other. The silence was oppressive. No one moved, no one spoke.

Donna wasn't a fan of silence, of quiet, of stillness or, unfortunately, of tact. "Are you really Rose Tyler?" she demanded, at last, when she really REALLY couldn't take one more second of this.

"No," said the Doctor, at the same second as Rose said, "Yes."

They glowered at each other, brown to brown, eyes positively livid.

"His Rose?" Donna continued, undeterred and possibly unaware of the exchange.

"Yes," said the Doctor, and Rose shook her head firmly, proclaiming, "No," in ringing tones.

They glowered again and stepped away from the console and each other, a good eight feet between them. "Define Rose Tyler," they both said, at the same time, her arms going up across her chest. The Doctor raised a hand several times, but put it back down, as if her very body language was telling him something that annoyed him so much he couldn't speak.

Martha had seen enough. She snorted. "It's just... you can't be Rose. Rose is like all... important and wonderful. Knows exactly what to say and do, is brilliant and beautiful and... and... you're just... you're a _chav_, for pity's sake, just, just, _ordinary_!"

Rose closed her eyes and started to laugh. It was a hollow sound, sad and lonely, but a laugh all the same. "So Rose is special or something?" she asked.

"Yeah," agreed Donna, just relieved to be hearing the girl talk. "Like she said. And perfect, too."

The blonde girl, who might or might not be Rose, suddenly hovered about an inch off the deck plates. The TARDIS beeped, the Doctor muttered, and Donna and Martha just stared.

"Stop it," the Doctor said, using exactly the same tone he used with Jack when he was flirting.

Rose settled back to the ground. "Is that more what you expected?" she asked, quietly, looking almost embarrassed as she turned away from the Doctor to face the companions.

"Well," Donna began, and thought about it, then continued. "Well, yeah."

"So some kind of special powers and..." she closed her eyes, and her voice broke. "And he loves her?" she asked, gesturing at the Doctor over her shoulder. He turned away completely.

"Well, yeah," said Martha softly.

"Then, no," said Rose. "I guess I'm not."

The Doctor rounded on her. "That's hardly fair," he snapped.

"You know what you need to say to make it fair," she replied. He closed his mouth and his face went still, angry, and stony. "Thought not," she said. She looked around the TARDIS with a tired, empty expression. "I'm leaving now," she added.

"What?" he demanded incredulously, meeting her eyes with an expression that ached and burned. "You can't! Where will you go?"

"There's one other person who knows what it's like to keep going when the Doctor says you're wrong," she answered, her face pale and her eyes refusing to release him. "I'll be there if you need me."

"I know," he said, softly, his eyes going distant and misty.

They looked at each other and it seemed, for a minute or so, that the tension might break and things would start to make sense. But no, apparently not. Because he smiled, ever so slightly, that scarred, broken smile of his, and said, "Quite right, too."

She nodded curtly and took a single step toward him. He froze, just literally froze, standing there. She took another step. His arms moved ever so slightly. Donna thought he was going to embrace the girl. Martha wondered if he was going to ward her off.

She shifted her weight to take a third step and, instead, vanished, as if she'd never been there.

"What the hell was that?" Martha demanded.

"Where did she go?" Donna exclaimed.

"She went to Jack," the Doctor said, sadly. He turned to Martha then. "That was an Eternal," he explained ,"called Rose Tyler."

Both women looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. There was nothing in his expression to make them suspect otherwise, after all. "Thought you said she wasn't Rose," Donna complained.

"She's not," he all but shouted. Then, calming slightly, he added, "Rose is human."

"Then..." Martha blinked at him. "She used to be human and she used to be Rose?" she asked, just for clarification.

The Doctor clutched at the console. "Yeah," he breathed, at last.

The two women stared at each other. "Mad," Donna mouthed, without a sound. Martha nodded.

"What'd you chase her off for?" Donna demanded.

"Because all this time," Martha continued, "all you've wanted, is Rose back. She came back, better than ever, and you suddenly change your mind?"

He looked like he wasn't going to say anything. He looked like he was going to yell at them both. He looked, honestly, like he was about to declare war on the entire Universe and dare the damn thing to do something about it. Then, his expression stilled, and he hung his head. "I thought... I knew... I _hoped_," he emphasized. "I _hoped_ that I at least managed to save her."

"What's an Eternal?" Martha asked.

"An immortal with power over Space, like I have power over Time."

"So she'll live forever," Donna said, and shrugged. "And have power like yours. Sounds pretty saved to me."

"She's changing," he replied coldly. "She'll always change. In a few eons, she won't even recognize herself. Every time she learns something new, she'll lose one more bit of her humanity. Take it as a warning, Donna. You should go. Everything I touch ends up in ruins. I destroyed half of Martha's life, Jack ended up so wrong I can't even look at him, I broke Sarah Jane into little pieces. And Rose..." His voice broke, then. He looked up at them with eyes that were streaming and icy at the same time. "I killed her by taking her hand, as surely as if I'd wrapped that hand around her throat."

"Sounds like..." Donna whispered, then cleared her throat. "Sounds like you almost wish you had."

His eyes went wide and his hands trembled as he reached up and dragged them through his hair. "No!" he shouted. "Not that! But if I'd left her alone, if I hadn't... and then babbling on about the world turning... and 'ooh, there's a storm, or you can have beans on toast...' and 'Oh, I'd love for you to come...' - maybe it was too late then..."

Martha frowned as he kept on babbling. Finally, in an attempt to stop what was obviously a grand case of Time Lord hysterics - "'One trip,' I said. Why can't I ever shut my gob?!" - she reached up and slapped him firmly. He blinked at her in astonishment. "What?" he asked.

"My life was and is my own choice and I'm proud of what I've done with it." She glared at him, coldly. "If you try to wish it away, then you really will have destroyed half of it. You can't change what people will do for you, Doctor. So, unless you're going to crawl into a hole and pretend the rest of the Universe doesn't exist, then I suggest you grow up and act your age."

Donna chuckled. "Your apparent age," she added. "We don't want you doddering."

He looked outraged, snapped up a finger, and they exchanged quick grins, because they expected him to go into "Superior Time Lord Lecture Mode". He apparently saw the look and dropped his hand, defeated. "I can't fix this," he admitted.

Martha Jones threw her shoulders back and met his eyes proudly. In the voice of absolute experience, she replied, "Maybe she doesn't want you to." She smiled then, and reached for his hand. "You said she changed Jack. Maybe she wants to make it up to him for awhile."

The Doctor appeared to consider this for a moment, then nodded, and took Martha's hand. "I'm sorry," he said, as he so often did. "I'm so sorry."

"I'm not," Martha replied. Then she shook her head. "Give it a few years, and then go talk to her. Sounds like you can do that."

The Doctor nodded, and there was, maybe, a hint of hope in his eyes. "The one thing we will always have, Rose and I, is time."

They waited in silence and then, like the rubber ball they always were, his emotions bounced back completely. He dropped Martha's hand and flew to the console, fingers dancing over keys and levers and switches. "Right then!" he announced. "Where to?" He looked up at them, light and fire and so much chaos implied in his impish expression. Slowly, ever so slowly, his grin came up like the dawn.

They looked at each other, shrugged as an entire conversation passed between them silently. As one, the companions turned back to the Doctor, matching his grin with their own.


	20. A Week in the Life

**As I am a professional writer and have work to do to get paid, I have decided to deal with these thudding plot bunnies in the traditional manner - I will inflict them on others. Please see my Profile for the Challenges of the Month. June Challenges will be available as of June 3rd, but feel free to tackle May's if you'd rather. The new set will run through the end of June. Please let me know when you respond to a Challenge so I can read and review.**

A/N: This chapter is based on the theories in my story "A Week in the Life". Don't read it if you haven't read that one but want to. It might not actually make sense without it, come to think of it.

**The "Week In the Life" Ending**

**_AKA: Based on my story - hire me?_**

"What are you going to do now?" the Doctor asked, smiling at the soft image before him, his hearts breaking slowly for things that could never be.

She smiled back. Stronger now, she wasn't crying, but he could see the pain and the hurt in her eyes as her image gazed back at him with heartache and sweet longing. It was maddening; they'd been here before, only it was worse this time because they'd had a bitter, precious hope in their respective, lonely lives. "Well, you know. Soon enough have a TARDIS. Same old life."

"Last of the Time Lords," he agreed, letting the tears fall because it wasn't right to keep them from her.

"I... I think it's your turn," she whispered.

He knew what she wanted and this time, she would have it. She was forever beyond the reach of his destructive wake, this time. She had one of her own, it seemed, and when, if, they were ever together, they cancelled each other out. She, like Jack, was always safe, now, safe to love, safe to miss. Safe to be away from him and yet so dear, he could never truly let her go. "Rose Tyler, I love you."

"I love you," she replied. "There's so many things I wish I could tell you. So much I need to ask you, too."

"Your TARDIS will probably tell you a lot. She's from mine, so she'll probably be a right little know-it-all."

"She sings."

"Yes," he allowed. Young TARDISes always had such precious melodies, and this one would have ancient ones, born from her parent's heart. "And think of me when she does, and I'll think of you as well."

"I'll always think of you," she told him. "Never be able to avoid it."

"Oh?"

"Yes. You see, they call me a lot of things over here."

He grinned, this time. "I'm familiar with the inconvenience."

She laughed, and it twisted his hearts, even as he filled himself full of it. That sound would have to last him a long time, the rest of eternity perhaps. "They call me 'The Calm before the Storm', the 'Bad Wolf', the 'Bringer of Shadows'. But mostly..."

He ached to hold her. She was going to be better than him - her titles were kinder, softer, lighter. "Mostly?" he prompted.

"Mostly, they just call me 'The Doctor.'"

And then she was gone, her image vanished, the brush of her lilting mind closed off from his. The tears never waned but the laughter came with them, now. "My Doctor!" he announced to the Universes, so proud of her he thought he might explode.

Forever is a long time, even for a pair of Time Lords. Impossible, on the other hand, is not a word in either vocabulary. They have all of time and space and in that, anything is possible now. After all, if one Doctor can do impossible on a regular basis, how can even the Void stand in the way of two?


	21. The Spoilers Ending

**As I am a professional writer and have work to do to get paid, I have decided to deal with these thudding plot bunnies in the traditional manner - I will inflict them on others. Please see my Profile for the Challenges of the Month. June Challenges will be available as of June 3rd, but feel free to tackle May's if you'd rather. The new set will run through the end of June. Please let me know when you respond to a Challenge so I can read and review.**

A/N: The below contains **SPOILERS**. **SPOILERS** are included in the below story. They are **SPOILERS**. They contain information that may **_SPOIL THINGS FOR YOU_**. If you do not like **SPOILERS**, please **DO NOT READ**. If you ignore this and THEN decide you do not like _**THE SPOILERS CONTAINED IN THIS STORY**_, do not complain to me. I cannot make it any more clear, I just can't. _** THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS CHAPTER!!**_

A/N 2: I have been asked my opinion. I have several. This was the fastest way I could deal with it. However, a long, detailed rant may very well be forthcoming. I will post it as an essay/story, or I will add it to my profile page. Keep an eye out for it.

* * *

**The Spoilers Ending**

**_AKA: A River Rants Through It_**

"I suppose you're wondering," the Doctor said from the doorway, "why I'm not trying to stop you?" He hadn't meant the end of it to come out as a question, but it did.

Rose looked up from her packing and smiled at him. "Doctor, I'll admit I'm not the nineteen year old shop girl you picked up, not anymore, but I'm still not going to make you talk about something you don't want to discuss."

He nodded and shot a hand up through his hair. "Yeah, I know," he said. "So, as a result, I never told you anything. You had to find out everything the hard way." Flippantly, enthusiastically, he exclaimed, "Hey, guess what, I can change my face! See!"

Rose looked up at him and smiled fondly. "I survived," she said. "I learned. I... I love you anyway."

He nodded and came to sit next to her, putting his head on her shoulder where she was bent over a bag now half-full of the things she had left behind so long ago. "Rose, I... I..."

She reached over and put a small, trembling hand on his lips. "Shhh," she said. "Don't say it, the Universe will implode. I know. I've always known."

He nodded and then, suddenly, he couldn't stand it anymore. He jumped to his feet and kicked the wall of the TARDIS. She ignored him, always had, his temper meant nothing to her. "The Universe hates me, anyway, I dunno why I bother."

Rose looked at him, just looked at him, her head tilted to the side, tender concern in her large, brilliant eyes. "If you want to tell me, you can. I'll listen. If you don't, that's fine, too. I'll find out when it's time."

"I'd been getting hints, Rose. For months, everywhere we went, that you were coming back to me. And at first, I tried to kill the hope, but it wouldn't go away. We had a forever, after all, you promised. The Universe owed us, I thought."

"Well, maybe," she agreed, and folded up the Union Flag shirt, tucking it into the bag.

"Yeah, I know," he said, bitterly. "Because I've only saved it like fifty times or so. I guess it'll have to be more than that, though, before the Universe thinks it even owes me the common courtesy of linear time."

"What happened?" she asked softly.

"Like I said, the Universe hates me. Just when I'd started to think maybe we could see each other again, I met a girl."

"OK," said Rose, looking rather astonished.

"No, not like that," he said. "Well, yeah, like that, but it's part of what I'm talking about. See, she knew me. Knew me really, REALLY well. She'd known me for years, and I'd never met her before in my life. She looked at me when it finally dawned on her, and she told me - 'you're so young'. And then, I got worried."

"Who was she?"

"An archaeologist," he replied with a shrug.

"That's a bit funny," she said. "You usually point and laugh at archaeologists."

He nodded. "That's exactly what I said. And she kept trying not to tell me anything, but she trusted me like you do, and occasionally, she would say things or do things, reminded me of you a lot, Rose, of our relationship. It was weird."

"I take it I'll never meet her?" Rose asked.

"I honestly don't know," he said. "I sorta doubt it... it... I mean, I wouldn't... it isn't..." He stopped and forked his fingers through his hair again. "It wouldn't be fair, Rose, not to either of you. See, like I said, she knew a lot about me and eventually, just to get me to stop thinking she was a plant, she told me one piece of information that it's almost impossible for anyone to have."

"What was that?" Rose asked, but she didn't look curious, so much as sad.

"My name," he confessed, grimly. "You used to get all mortally offended about that, I remember."

Rose sighed. "I'm sorry, that's terrible. So you marry her or something?"

"Yeah, guess so." He shook his head, bitterly. "And it's terrible, because right at the end, she sacrificed herself to stop me doing it. Saved me, saved everyone. I managed to save her consciousness, but not her life. She'll live forever as part of the largest main frame in the Universe."

"So you saved her after she saved you. That's good, Doctor." Rose put a comforting hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "I'm sorry you lost her."

"There you go again," he said, gratefully, but then he shook his head bitterly. "The worst thing, though, is that she knew. At the end. She must have thought, the entire time we were together, the way she talked about me... she must have thought I was this wonderful, special, brilliant time traveler who just happened to turn up at odd intervals because he could. She knew in the end, though."

"What do you mean?" Rose asked.

"She figured it out, realized it, couldn't help it. That the entire time I knew her, I knew how she died. And there, at the end, she had to have realized the kind of bloody coward I really am. Because it's such a risk for me to be with people, because I always lose them. She must have thought right up until the end that it was because she was worth the risk or something. But it wasn't that. It was simply that there was no risk involved. I'll meet her and spend time with her and never have to worry about how she'll disappear because I'll always know exactly how I destroyed her."

Rose took his hand and held it tenderly. "I don't think you're a coward, Doctor. I think it's very brave of you to risk it, when you already know how it will end. Going through that, loving her, watching her age and change, knowing how she'll die and when. That's not a cowardly act."

"But it is!" he exclaimed. "Because I will do all these things, simply because I know I'll do them. Not because of her, not because of what she'll mean or not mean to me. But to preserve the time line. I'm a Time Lord, I won't be able to stop myself, even if I want to do. The instinct is too strong. So she'll have this strange alien husband and a life of her own away from him, and I'll turn up completely at random when she needs me or wants me, and it'll probably be some whirlwind courtship, because if I like her - and I will - I won't have any reason NOT to do everything I can to win her over."

He jerked his hands through his hair again and started flipping the sonic screwdriver in the air. "And here's the worst bit!" he raged. "After everything she said, I don't think I'll even be very original or creative. 'Cuz she sounded like you, a LOT like you. I'll just take what you and I could have had together and..." He hunted for a word, then spat the one that felt just disgusting enough out like it was poison: "_recycle_ it!! " He caught the screwdriver one last time and flung it at the wall. "She'll live her whole life with me thinking I'm wonderful and she's unique and what I'll probably be doing is treating her like someone else."

He shook his head, shook off the rage, and let his head drop into his hands. "And that's just sick," he admitted.

Rose stood next to him, with tears in her eyes, tears of sympathy, maybe even empathy, the tears she knew he could never shed. "I'm so sorry," she said. "But, Doctor, her being like me doesn't prove anything about you. That might just be the way women who love you always act. Sarah Jane and I seem a bit the same, too, you know."

"No, not really. Sarah's not like you. She let me ruin her a tiny bit at a time and you never would. Martha, neither. Oh, she loved me to pieces but when it came down to it, she blamed me for everything, which neither you nor... her... would ever do."

"Oh," said Rose. "Well, still. I'm glad she'll love you, properly, and trust you and everything. I can't stay and it's good to know someone will be with you when you need them. Someone who can give you all the things I never could."

"Why does this sound like a conversation I've had before from the other side?" he asked vaguely. "And I'll still have to wonder how I'll destroy you in the end, anyway. Even after all this..." He stopped thinking and looked at her, really looked at her, put his hands on her shoulders and trapped her eyes with his baffled gaze. "Rose, how can you? After everything I've done and not done with you, every missed chance and last opportunity, and even now, when we could try to build a life together 'cuz we're at least in the same Universe, I'm standing here telling you we can't do it because I'm going to swan off and get married to some poor woman who obviously deserves better. And you're standing here, crying, not because I'm hurting you, but because I'm hurting." He was about to break down himself, he knew it. If her next words weren't 'because I'm better than you', he was going to fall apart right there at her feet.

"I'm not sure what you mean, Doctor," she said softly, reaching up a small hand to cup his cheek. "You can't destroy me. Everything that happens to me - everything - is my own choice. I create myself, remember. I had the entirety of time and space in my head, knew everything there was to know, and I chose me and I chose my path. I'm the way I am, because that's what I wanted to be. You have to understand that, even if I don't. Because there were things I knew then that I don't know anymore, and they're what I didn't want to give up."

He tilted his head into her hand and would have let the tears fall as his arms went around her, but she suddenly giggled as he went to pull her close. "I confess, all right," she said. "I'm a bit disappointed. Every body in the Universe gets to bloody snog you but me."

He set her back from him and looked at her, incredulously, unable to stop himself stammering, or his jaw hanging loose between stammers. "But..."

"No, not now," she said, and grinned with her tongue poking out her teeth. "It'd be weird."

"Why weird?" he wanted to know.

"Well, you're pretty much a married man. Ish. Just do me a favor and warn her you might change your face, yeah?"

He struggled to remember, didn't think she'd ever mentioned... "She'll never see me do it," he said, at last, when he was reasonably certain. "But I'll warn her, all the same, it's only fair."

"Time changes around you," Rose agreed. "So you have to be careful. And now, I need to finish packing. Can you drop me off at Jack's?"

He blinked in astonishment. "Jack's? Why're you going to Captain Fancy-all, then?"

"You sound like last you, saying that," she teased. Then her face became still and set. "I owe him, Doctor. He needs someone to hold his hand, right now. The girl he fancies just got married, he lost half his team, his brother's in his freezer. He spent a millennia buried under Cardiff to try to make up for what happened to the kid. He's older than you and lonelier than both of us put together. And he's only human and you're not and I'm... I can be there. It's the least I can do."

The Doctor nodded grimly. "He didn't tell me any of this. Oh, hell, and I knew it..."

"What?"

"When we went to Cardiff the first time with Jack, I got a splitting headache trying to keep up with his time lines because they went askew. It must have been because there were three of him in the same place at the same time. I knew there were two, but the third... I could have fixed it."

"Stop it," she ordered. "You don't get to blame yourself. If anyone's to blame, it's me. I'm the one who insisted he had to be alive. Period."

"Captain Jack Harkness, fact," said the Doctor.

"Yeah, his business cards say that. Was that you?"

"Yeah," he admitted, then scratched the back of his neck nervously. "I'll go set the coordinates. And Rose... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Rose shook her head. "No. Don't apologize to me. We've talked about this before." She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a familiar brown wallet, flipping it open to reveal the words 'The story of my life'. "I've still got this. And I'll have my mobile, if you'll fix my new one. Call me or whatever, if you need me. Even if you want some help with your lady love, yeah?"

He sighed. "That's pretty much set in stone, isn't it?"

"Well, maybe. Maybe not. You'd know that better than me. Just... I'll be your friend, forever, Doctor, and don't you forget it. I promised and I'm never gonna leave you, not completely. We'll worry about the rest of it, later. What's time to a Time Lord, anyway?" She smiled then and gestured at her bedroom door. "Go on, take me to Cardiff."

"As you wish," he said, and turned to leave. At the door, he stopped, and spoke again, in the jangling syllables of his native language, words she wouldn't understand but should always have.

"I know," she replied. "Me, too."

He smiled.

* * *

Rose walked out of the TARDIS with her bag over her shoulder. The Doctor had modified it so it was bigger on the inside, and she had most of the things she'd lost with her. Not everything, though, because the TARDIS was her true home, and you had to leave things behind when you left home, even for an extended trip.

She looked around the Hub in astonishment. It was full of incredibly advanced technology, like she had never seen before, even in her own Torchwood. It looked like Jack's 51st century know-how had really played hell with the place.

She also noticed it was deserted, so she went to Jack's office to look for him, hoping he, at least, hadn't gone off. "I'm sorry if I'm a little late," she said. "You know how the Doctor is for punctuality."

A very, very drunk Jack Harkness looked up at her from his desk with extremely bleary eyes. "A little late?" he asked. "Sweet Jesus, I'd love to know what you two would call tardy."

She stared at him, worrying at her bottom lip while he poured another shot down his throat and another in a waiting glass at the same time. "Where is everybody?" she finally asked.

He snorted. "There isn't anybody, Rosie. There hasn't been anybody in a decade."

"What? What the hell year did that idiot drop me off in, then? I'll kill him."

"Sorry, there's a line," Jack said. Actually, what he said was "wworor, thessalin," but, thanks to growing up on the Estate all those ages ago, she translated drunk really well even without the TARDIS.

"So?" she demanded. "When am I?"

"Twenty-third century," he replied. "I'm celebrating, 'cuz tomorrow, I'm gonna blow the place up."

"Oh," she said. "And then what?"

"No idea," he admitted. "But we can always build something out of the parts lying around this hole. Probably could make a TARDIS with all this junk. Drink?"

She considered, looking around at the boxes and files and what-not that were making Jack's more-antique-than-it-ought-to-be desk look like it was an island floating in a pile of detritus. "Nah," she said. "I'll help you clean out your desk."

"Good idea," he answered vaguely, about one shot from passing out over top of it. "I can't seem to find it."

Rose just smiled at him and set to work.


End file.
